by Heidi Lowe
“Of course I'm thinking of vengeance, you dick! Do you think that dead bitch is going to get away with this? Putting me in chains, locking me up down here like I'm an animal. Me, Zack Lindley, Mayor Lindley's son. She'll get hers, and I'll be the one to give it to her.”
His voice trailed off when the cellar door clicked.
Jean looked at them both as she handed them their food and water. Their filthy, tattered clothes were practically hanging off them. Gaunt in the faces, lost in the eyes. She could see the cheekbones through their skin, which she hadn't been able to see in the beginning. One kill since turning was about to become three if she wasn't careful. She didn't want them to die, not by her hand, and not in that cellar. But she didn't know what else to do. If she let them go free they would squeal, and the whole town would come for her. She wasn't prepared to die just now, not while she still had responsibilities. One responsibility in particular.
“Why don't you just kill us?” Tommy said. He wasn't trying to be smart, he genuinely wanted to die. Death was better than this.
“Because you don't deserve to die,” Jean replied. She meant it. What they'd tried to do to Lissa, that was unforgivable, but she'd intervened before it happened. They didn't deserve death. Had they succeeded, well, that would have been a different story.
“We'll die soon anyway,” he added, somewhat comforted by this fact. All pain ends, he thought. Sooner or later.
“Hopefully I'll have a plan before that happens.”
She sat on the steps and listened to them gobble down their food. Being down there with them reminded her that she was a monster, that she could never escape her true nature. So what if she didn't kill, didn't feed without permission? If she ever tried to forget, even for a minute, and aim for happiness, however temporary, there were plenty of reminders. She didn't want to be happy, because she didn't think she deserved it.
After five minutes, as she got up to leave, Tommy spoke again. “H–how is the girl?” His voice was shaky, uncertain, as though afraid that he didn't have a right to inquire.
Jean stared at him for a moment and knew that his concern was genuine.
“She's fine. Just fine,” she said.
ELEVEN
If she wanted me to leave her alone she shouldn't have kissed me back. If she wanted me to leave her alone, she shouldn't have entered my life and made herself known to me. No, despite what she said, what she insisted, I could see that passion in her eyes when she looked at me. There was something big there, something that she couldn't control, not for lack of trying.
As I walked down the quiet lane that led to her mansion, having left straight from the studio, an hour after dusk when the sun was but a distant memory, I drove myself mad trying to figure out why she was resisting me. She wanted me as much as I wanted her, I just knew it. You didn't kiss someone like that if you didn't want them. But for some reason there was a self-imposed ban on me and my vagina. How frustrated we both were!
My phone buzzed incessantly in my jeans. Ignored. I didn't care who was on the other line. It wouldn't be Jean; anyone else could wait.
“Hi, is Jean in?” I asked when the maid opened the mansion door to me a couple of minutes later.
“Oh, uh...” She looked uneasy, blushing. “Ms. Posey is presently engaged. Maybe you should come back another time.”
“I'm not coming back another time. I walked all the way here to see her, and I want to see her.”
The maid sighed. “You'd better come in, then.” Reluctantly she let me through.
“Upstairs?” I asked, already on the first step.
“I really think you should wait down here till she's finished.”
I didn't take her advice. The determination in me was too strong for me to mind my manners. This wasn't my house and I had no right to barge in here like this, but even God himself couldn't stop me.
I heard laughter coming from the direction of Jean's bedroom. Several voices. Something about the laughter sounded sexual. I held my breath as I neared the room, a sinking feeling in my stomach. A feeling that had no business being there. Whatever was going on in that room I had no right to condemn. But when I opened the door and saw three half-naked women intertwined on the bed, Jean entangled with them, head buried between one girl's legs while the others played with each other, I wanted to die.
On closer inspection, what I thought was Jean going down on the woman was actually her feeding from her thigh artery. I knew this because when she looked up at me, there was a trickle of blood on her lip. Again, she didn't look surprised to see me.
She wasn't half-naked like the others. Fully clothed, but I still hated everything about this scene, including those three whores in her bed.
I glared at Jean but didn't run off like I wanted to. I wanted her to feel dirty beneath my stare, to feel guilty. I wanted her to see how much it hurt.
“All right, that's enough, girls,” she said.
Apart from the pouts, none of the women protested against being dismissed. They collected their clothes and scurried out of the room.
Now that we were alone, Jean refused to look at me.
“You wanted me to see that, didn't you?”
Her silence told me yes.
“You want me to think that this is who you are, who you really are, so that I can stop pursuing you.”
“This is who I am, Lissa,” she insisted.
“No it's not. For some crazy, fucked up reason you want to keep me away, keep me on the periphery. Close enough to keep an eye on me, but not close enough for me to fall for you.”
“I want better for you,” she said, her voice quiet.
“Better than what?”
“Better than me!” Her dark eyes seemed even darker in their gloom. I wanted to hold her, to cast away that pain that tormented her. Imagine that: I, a mere mortal, weak, wanting to comfort this strong, fearsome woman. But right then, as with most times when we were together, we were just two women on equal footing.
I knelt before her, inserting myself between her legs. She resisted until she couldn't any longer, until she couldn't fight the fact that she wanted me there.
“I don't understand why being with me feels so wrong to you. Are you afraid I can't handle you? Is that it?” I questioned softly, holding her waist.
She stroked my face with the back of her hand. A single tear fell down her cheek, a combination of blood and water. It shocked me at first, but it didn't scare me away.
“I'm the one who can't handle you,” she said. “You're so pure and good, nothing like me. I want you to stay that way.”
“I'm none of those things, Jean. I'm here with you when I have a girlfriend. I'm damaged and broken in a way you could never understand. Deserted by my mother, practically orphaned, afraid of being alone, afraid to fall in love...”
“Oh, baby.” Now more tears, more blood-tears, which she wiped away quickly with the palms of her hands, as though ashamed for me to see them.
My being there was having the opposite effect, I realized. I had come there to seduce her, to make her mine for the night, not to make her cry. I wanted to make love to her desperately, pick up where those three women left off. But doing so now would have been taking advantage. I didn't want our first time together to be shrouded in sorrow.
I pressed my lips to hers lightly, stifling her sniffles momentarily. Her kiss tasted metallic yet sweet.
“We're going to make love,” I whispered, my lips lingering in front of hers. “Not tonight, maybe not tomorrow night, maybe not a week from today. But we will. So you're gonna have to get right with that. Because I'm not going anywhere, and I'm not giving up on you. I know you don't want to want me, but you can't help it. I know the feeling well.”
I got up slowly, reluctantly separating myself from her, the last thing I wanted to do. If our first time was ever going to mean something like I wanted it to, we would have to reconvene when we were both 'right with it'.
Animated chatter traveled down the hall from the living-r
oom as I turned the key in the door and let myself into the apartment. Only then did I remember. Crap! Hilarie and I were supposed to be entertaining. She'd invited the other lesbian doctor from the hospital and her partner over for dinner.
“Where have you been? I've been calling you for hours.” She came to meet me in the hall, a glass of red wine swishing in her hand.
“I'm sorry. I completely forgot,” I said tiredly.
“I reminded you a dozen times this morning. How could you forget?” She didn't let me speak. “As usual I was left cooking dinner.”
“You don't like my cooking anyway.” I knew that wasn't the point, but I just wasn't in the mood. I wanted to lie down and daydream, not fight about a stupid dinner I hadn't even wanted to host.
“What the hell is wrong with you? Our friends come over for dinner, I can't get hold of you, and you have this blase attitude.”
I sighed, rolled my eyes, and stepped past her. Nope, not tonight. I poked my head in the living-room, waved and said a brief hello to “our friends” (who were really only Hilarie's friends. I didn't know them very well at all), then headed to the bedroom.
“And where do you think you're going?”
“To lie down.” I didn't look back at her. And when she started complaining, I closed the bedroom door behind me so I couldn't hear.
I still hadn't fallen asleep an hour later when our guests said goodnight and left. Even if I had been, I suspected Hilarie would have shaken me out of my slumber. That was how much she wanted to have it out with me.
She burst into our room, her rage making her red-faced. She stood over the bed, hands on her hips, nostrils flaring.
“Well?” she asked after a moment.
“Well what?”
“I'm waiting for a goddamn apology.”
“I said I was sorry for forgetting–”
“I want an apology for you making me look like a fool in front of our friends,” she shouted, her blonde hair shaking wildly.
I sat up, now pissed off. I'd wanted to avoid an argument, but with Hilarie it was impossible to do. When she had to get something off her chest, there was no stopping her.
“I didn't want to do the dinner in the first place. And they're not our friends, they're yours.”
“You don't care that you made me look like an idiot?”
“You don't need me to do that for you, Hilarie. You do a fine job of it yourself.”
She ripped the bedsheet off me suddenly and threw it to the floor. At first I didn't know why she did it, because it seemed such a random thing to do. Clearly she had to do something short of actually slapping me, which I was sure she wanted to do.
“Where the hell were you?”
“You know where I was, I was at the studio–”
“After the studio? Because I called Petr and he said you were on your way home. That was almost two hours before you arrived. So where were you.”
I felt like a child who'd just come in late for curfew.
“I went for a walk.”
Her glare grew fiercer, more suspicious than ever. “A walk. And where did your walk take you, huh? Up to Green Point?”
Green Point was where Jean's mansion was. She was on to me.
“You went to see her, didn't you?” The scathing look she gave me then made my skin tingle as though it were on fire. “That... thing you've befriended.”
Jean didn't need to be defended, but I felt obligated to do it anyway. “If you're talking about Jean, she's not a thing.”
“So you were there, with her?”
“I went to see her, yes.”
“Did you fuck her?” she demanded. She looked me up and down in disgust, like I was filth.
“No!” My outrage wasn't justified; had it not been for Jean's tears, the evening would have turned out very differently, and this conversation also. I would have still been in her bed now, if I'd had my way.
“Will I smell her on you? Will the stench of dead flesh be on you? Your neck? Between your legs?”
This crude language, this wasn't like Hilarie.
“I didn't sleep with her. That's the truth.”
“I don't believe a word you say, Lissa.”
Before I knew it, she sprung onto the bed and grabbed me by the jaw. Her grip wasn't tight, and her expression didn't quite match her action. Did I detect lust?
“What are you doing?” I gripped her wrist but didn't move her hand.
“You like dangerous women, huh? You like it rough, violent?”
This definitely wasn't the Hilarie I knew, but for some reason I couldn't explain, I wanted to go along with it. We both needed it, though perhaps for different reasons. As ashamed as I was to admit it to myself, my yearning for Jean guided my actions that night with my girlfriend.
“You don't have it in you,” I goaded, my eyes reflecting the same lust I saw in hers.
She shoved me to the bed. Every item of clothing she removed from me was extracted aggressively and carelessly. She took hers off with equal aggression. And then she was between my legs, my thighs wrapped around her waist, while she roughly slipped her fingers inside me.
I closed my eyes and let her work me over. She pressed her chest to mine as she leaned forward to kiss me. When the kisses came they were rabid, deliciously brutal, just like her attack on my sex.
“Tell me I don't have it in me,” she breathed against my lips.
Clearly I had underestimated her. But look at what it had taken for us to get to this point: my attraction for another woman, and Hilarie's jealousy.
“I was wrong,” I moaned, my body jerking and sliding beneath her.
“That's right, you don't know me at all.” She sounded smug as she pounded away. “And as long as you live under my roof, as long as you're my girlfriend, your body belongs to me to do with as I please.”
When I expired minutes later, breathless and bruised, an unusual feeling swept over me in the wake of my orgasm. I felt like I'd been unfaithful to Jean.
“I hope I didn't hurt you,” Hilarie said, kissing me tiredly, all the aggression now gone. “I don't know what came over me.”
“You didn't,” I said.
She remained inside me and on top of me for several minutes. I just wanted her to go away. But I couldn't say that, not after she'd bared her soul, been dragged out of her comfort zone.
I knew then, however, that as good as the sex had been, it was the beginning of the end for us. Actually, the beginning of the end had come long before Jean's arrival, but only now could I admit it to myself.
TWELVE
“Am I crazy?” I asked, stuffing a couple of french fries into my mouth. The fries at Boo's Burgers left a lot to be desired, but the burgers themselves were to die for. I couldn't get enough of them, and Boo (whose real name was Gary) couldn't get enough of taking my money.
Petr sat across from me in the little eatery. We were there on a lunch break, and this was his treat to me. My partner in crime and fellow admirer of the famous burgers. People came from all over to sample them.
“Yep,” he said, taking a huge bite of his burger, a piece of onion ring slipping out.
“Be quiet, you don't know what I'm referring to.”
“I thought you meant generally. Because yes, you're crazy. But that's why I love you.”
“I meant about Jean. Am I crazy going after her? Getting involved with a vampire?” I whispered the last bit so that no one else could hear. Stigma, like I said. Sometimes even a mere mention of the word got people's backs up, was enough to put fear into them. Even with the legislation in place, limiting their numbers to three, it was still too much for some to bear. Only a few weeks earlier I'd been just like them. That was before Jean.
“You already know what I think. So if you're waiting for someone to talk you out of it, you'd better look elsewhere.”
“Things are the worst they've ever been between me and Hilarie.” Even the impromptu, rough sex we'd had a few days earlier hadn't helped. We'd gone straight back to being
what we were before. Only now I felt more anxious than ever about our situation. Suddenly, being just okay in the relationship wasn't enough for me.
“Leave her.”
“It's not that simple,” I whined.
“It is that simple. You don't love her, you never have. But don't feel bad; I don't think she loves you either.”
I glared at his shit-eating grin. “That's so nice to hear.”
“What? It's true. You both got comfortable and didn't bother looking for anything better. You have major desertion issues. Being alone scares you.”
“Thanks, Dr. Phil,” I said bitterly.
“Your lovers seem to be getting older.” He chuckled to himself, his mouth full. “What do you think that means? If you were straight would you only date old men?”
I made a face, shuddered at the thought. About the other thing, I didn't respond. I knew exactly what it meant. Along with desertion issues and fears of being alone, I had mommy issues. I knew what a shrink would have told me about my choice in lovers: they were always older women, women with standing, women who commanded authority. Just as a mother would in the home. When your mom packs her bags one day, doesn't say goodbye, and leaves her family behind, never to contact them again, it's no surprise some of that would stick with her children. I think I hated her more than I would have had my father still been alive. But at twelve, when he was murdered, her absence became all the more agonizing. Their marriage had been rocky for years – I remember the arguments. She wasn't happy with him, though with us she'd been the best mother we could have asked for. So it was a big shock when we came back home from school to find her things gone.
“Your girlfriends have to fulfill two roles, and they don't even know it,” Petr said, confirming that he knew me far too well. “Jean Posey, I gotta say, she comes the closest. She has a really motherly nature about her, for a vampire, of course.”
“I hadn't noticed,” I said. Lie! It was her desire to protect me, to take care of me that had been the initial draw. After her beauty, that is.
As I took a bite of my burger, the door to the restaurant opened and a sheriff walked in. A thick bodied, broad-shouldered brute of a man. He looked around the joint, took off his hat and sat at the bar. I noticed him immediately.
